3 December: MIGS and The Hague Institute for Global Justice hosted the second Transatlantic Strategic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect at Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa. With the support of the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, MIGS brought together over 30 Members of Parliament, Canadian Government officials, academics, and experts from noted organizations including Doctors Without Borders, the Council on Foreign Relations, Crisis Action, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Stanley Foundation, Centre for International Governance Innovation, the Institute for Global Policy and the United Nations. A report will be produced in 2015. Read about the first event held in The Hague in July here.
Events
6 November: Kyle Matthews spoke at the 'Crisismappers' Pre-Conference training event held at Google in New York.
7 November: MIGS hosted an event at Concordia University: ‘Informers, Intelligence Recruitment and Apartheid Counterinsurgency’. The talk was given by Dr. Daniel Douek, lecturer in the Political Science Department at Concordia University and research fellow at MIGS.
8 November: Supported by the Nexus Fund, Kyle Matthews traveled to Argentina for two weeks on a civil society exchange program with the think tank CRIES (Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales). While in Argentina, he met with government officials and various civil society organizations, spoke on a panel at the Argentinian Council on International Affairs (CARI) on ‘The Role of Civil Society in the Prevention of Mass Atrocities: From Canada to Argentina’, and spoke at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario at a conference titled ‘Canadian Foreign Policy and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities and Human Rights’.
12 November: Roméo Dallaire gave a lecture at Carleton University as part of FPA Reads, a Program in the Faculty of Public Affairs that chose Dallaire’s Shake Hands With The Devil as this year’s book.
15 November: Following the reading of Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Ruined”, Frank Chalk participated in a panel discussion on sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The “Talk Back” discussion was part of a series of events titled “Have We Forgotten Yet?” organized by the Imago Theatre to mark the one hundred year anniversary of the beginning of the First World War.
4 December: Kyle Matthews and Marie Lamensch participated in a panel discussion at the Canadian Humanitarian Conference in Ottawa. The topic of the panel was: ‘Beyond Government: The Role of Humanitarian Organizations in Upholding the Responsibility to Protect Principle’. Also speaking on the panel were Clémentine Olivier, Humanitarian Affairs Advisor, Médecins sans Frontières Canada and Eamon Aloyo, Senior Researcher at The Hague Institute for Global Justice.
In the media
6 November: An article about MIGS’s involvement with the Holocaust Education Series and the Raoul Wallenberg events was published in the Canadian Jewish News. The article titled ‘Genocide Preventable through International Action’ is available here on page 5.
8 November: Roméo Dallaire and Shelly Whitman, Executive Director of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldier Initiative, co-authored an article in Global Brief titled 'To End the Use of Child Soldiers Look to the Security Sector'.
11 November: Roméo Dallaire and Shelly Whitman, Executive Director of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldier Initiative, co-authored an article in The Globe and Mail titled 'Don't lose sight of future threats as Canada remembers the past'.
18 November: An article “Genocide and R2P: Bittersweet Remembrance” was published in the McGill International Review discussing the Montreal Raoul Wallenberg event held on 29 October.
8 December: Kyle Matthews gave a series of syndicated interviews for CBC radio on the Islamic State’s use of social media and threats made against Canada. He spoke to thirteen CBC radio stations across the country. You can listen to his interview with CBC Montreal here where he discusses the role of MIGS’s Digital Mass Atrocity Prevention Lab in countering genocidal groups online.
9 December: Kyle Matthews spoke to Global News about the atrocities committed by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and threats made against Canada. Watch “Threatening Canada in the Name of ISIS”.
Awards
10 November: Romeo Dallaire was the recipient of the National Leadership Award at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic High School in Guelph. Watch his speech here.